<p>Hi, i got caught for cheating but i have decent grades. Do i still have a chance for medical school? I'm really worried right now. I don't know if it goes into my transcript but when i go in i'm planning to plead guilty so i get in less trouble. Any tips would help. Thank You What would i have to do now to prove to medical schools that i don't cheat anymore.. or anything to make it into medical school. </p>
<p>Andrew</p>
<p>You are toast. Maybe appy to Mexico or Granada -- or get letter from your dean...</p>
<p>There's very little chance you'll get into a US med school (regardless of your stats) if this incident is on your transcript.</p>
<p>A lot depends on how your school treats academic dishonesty - that will make the difference about whether you have any chance still of going to med school. </p>
<p>My daughter's school take academic dishonesty very seriously and the consequences range from an F shreik on the transcript ( an F for automatically failing the class the shreik to indicate the F is for cheating) to suspension or expulsion. Anything of the above will probably prevent you getting into a US med school.</p>
<p>I'm going to write more later, but offhand I'd say that my own answer would have been a lot more ambivalent than the answers here so far.</p>
<p>You're cheating, but you think the fact that you have decent grades should be a point in your favor. If I were on an adcom, which I'm not, I would wonder how many of your decent grades are due to cheating and how many of them are not. Also, if you have any "bad" grades on your transcript, I would wonder, "Well, if you were cheating and still weren't able to get decent grades..."</p>
<p>If you're a college junior, I'm not sure what else you can do during your academic career as an undergraduate to shake this off. Maybe you could take some time off after graduation and work in order to put some distance between yourself and the cheating incident before you apply to medical school.</p>
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You're cheating, but you think the fact that you have decent grades should be a point in your favor. If I were on an adcom, which I'm not, I would wonder how many of your decent grades are due to cheating and how many of them are not.
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<p>My thoughts exactly, how would a med school be able to put credence in ANY of your grades?</p>
<p>I really don't like to rush to judgment and I don't want to preach, but it seems that you have an interesting past history of somewhat skirting the truth....I found this on an old CC post you made while applying to UC Davis undergrad several years ago. In the post you said:</p>
<p>"I'm worried about this too!
I said i said i was going to take the AP Calculus exam, but i don't think i am going to.. and i didn't even sign up.
Should i notify the Admissions office? and will they revoke my acceptance?"</p>
<p>Not sure what you did, but from subsequent posts it appeared that you were not going to tell them.</p>
<p>Seeing these old posts would make it appear that academic dishonesty may not be a new thing for you. </p>
<p>You also have other posts about slacking off your senior year and getting Cs and then worrying about having your admission to UCD revoked.</p>
<p>My advice like that of others would be to take some time off after undergrad, put some distance between things and hopefully revisit your personal code of ethics.</p>
<p>you're **** out of luck. why would you cheat?</p>
<p>All depends on the institutional action. If this is something your professor reported to the University, you're in a bit of trouble. If you somehow got lucky and it was only an F on a single assignment or test, then you have a lot less to worry about. But you're going to have to explain any F in a course, and you have to do so honestly. If your school puts a mark on the transcript, you're sunk.</p>
<p>I think in a different application cycle (say 5-7 years ago), you'd have an extreme uphill battle, but there might still have been an extreme, extreme, outside shot if you had otherwise exceptional grades and MCAT scores (although the validity of those scores would also be called into question). But with the way things are now...not so much - the competition is simply too much and why should you get in over someone who achieved without cheating. And to be blunt - I'm glad that's the case. You don't magically become ethical, and if eadad's post is as accurate as I expect it to be, you'll never possess the ethical fortitude that I believe a physician should have.</p>
<p>So I've thought about it a little bit, and my initial impression is the same one I have now: we don't have nearly enough information at this point. I doubt you do either.</p>
<p>If credibility of the grades was the only problem -- it's not, but bear with me -- then medical school committees would simply rely on the MCAT, which has very extreme security measures in place. They run into the "We don't know what your transcript means" problem all the time: schools they're not familiar with, unique majors, etc. This is one of the key purposes of standardized testing. If a known cheater has a 4.0 and a 28, he's simply sunk.</p>
<p>What's much more serious, of course, is the ethical implications. At this stage, I think it's possible that a medical school might still have some interest. It depends on who exactly you have become in light of this incident. If you can write and talk about it in a way that demonstrates contrition, an understanding of what you've done wrong, a firm avoidance, and a hunger for atonement -- then maybe, just maybe, somebody will be interested.</p>
<p>Claiming contrition is different from demonstrating it. First, confess to everything, not just to what you've been caught for. Offer to repeat any classes in which you have cheated, whether you've been caught or not. Write personal letters of apology to each and every professor, whether you were caught or not. Second, volunteer for extra security measures during medical school examinations. You will be writing many, many essays on this subject, and you need to have and to show that you take this seriously. If your classmates get closed-book, take-home exams, you need to be willing to take them in a classroom under a professor's supervision. Whether the school actually takes you up on this is up to them; you need to be willing to submit to extra scrutiny.</p>
<p>Third, I think the suggestions to take time off are very good ones. Find a place with personal growth -- maybe a low-paying, hard-work job -- and grow as much as you can from the people around you. Move to a new town, sign up for a job you never thought you'd do, and learn everything you can. (For example, if you're from the same background as I am, an immigrant family living in California, I would think a couple of years working construction in Amarillo, Texas would be very good for you.) Or, better yet, join the military.</p>
<p>In my mind, here's how your essay on the subject would look:
--It would explain why you did what you did (high pressure situation) without justifying it. Be clear that you actively chose an immoral decision.
--It would give all details, whether or not you were caught. It would explicitly provide a list of the courses in which you cheated and it would describe your infractions in detail.
--It would emphasize that you understood why this was wrong, and that you accepted consequences beyond those assigned to you. In addition to accepting guilt, you wrote personal letters of apology and offered to make up any work your professors requested -- even in courses where they had been none the wiser.</p>
<p>--Finally, you imposed an "exile" of sorts on yourself to try and gain a firmer foundation for your values. You understand that you got caught up in pressures and needed time to build a character that could withstand them in the future.</p>
<p>--Perhaps most importantly, you understand the importance of not repeating this mistake and you are willing to prove it. You are willing to submit to whatever extra scrutiny the school feels necessary. You are willing to submit to subject testing in any of the undergraduate courses the admissions department still feels wary of.</p>
<p>If you do all of these things and if you mean them, I think it is possible -- possible -- that some medical schools, somewhere, will take a second look at you. Here's hoping that everything works out, in the long run, for the best.</p>
<p>I think the issue is that this is such a buyer's market (med schools being the buyer) that they really don't have to go out of their way to interpret your grades or to request a reason as to why you cheated. They simply move on to the other 49 applicants that are applying for each seat. </p>
<p>I don't think decent stats alone will get you a second look (way too many applicants with decent stats) but if you have something else amazing in your app (Rhodes Scholar, publication in Nature/Science, ie stuff that would raise an eyebrow), you might have a chance. </p>
<p>I also think time off would be good but I think it would have to involve significant time off (>3 years).</p>
<p>maybe i'm missing something here, but if you get caught cheating and your school doesn't visibly do anything about it, why would you tell an adcom you cheated in the first place? lying would be a better option, no?</p>
<p>You also have a post in this thread and others about wanting to transfer out of UCD to UCLA for your senior year:</p>
<p>"Is it possible to transfer to UCLA for my senior year?
i'm currently a biochemistry major in UCD, but want to go to UCLA.
I also want to go to med school any tips would help."</p>
<p>Does this have anything to do with your getting caught cheating at UCD and trying to run from it? Are you thinking that the UC system is so big that it could fall through the cracks somehow? </p>
<p>You have to understand that your past history/behavior now raises many questions regarding your true motive.</p>
<p>To paraphrase Bigredmed, one doesn't magically become ethical.</p>
<p>MolSysBio</p>
<p>So we are now encouraging this person to lie? Looking at their past history it seems they really don't need much encouragement. Does the end really justify the means that much that we would want someone to lie about cheating? I for one would not want to have a doctor who lied their way into medical school; it would make me wonder what other short cuts they took, what classes they cheated their way through etc.</p>
<p>if this kid wants med school that badly, why would you tell him to admit to cheating in an essay or during the interview? i'm assuming most people would lie their way out of this, anyway. for the sake of the kid's future, it's probably the best thing to do.</p>
<p>and why are we making this situation more than it seems to be? cheating isn't that big of an offense -- eadad, i'd be much more worried if my doctor had a history of drug use, criminal activity, or general kevorkian-like ongoings. what cheating constitutes is hazy in itself. for example, did this kid have the answers to a test from a fraternity study guide? was he wrongly accused after having stretched his neck during an exam? was the person in front/next to him openly displaying his/her exam in a manner that the answers were revealed? regardless of what actually happened, cheating on one exam isn't nearly as "morally reprehensible" as we're making it -- there are far worse things in this world.</p>
<p>Perhaps you do not realize the seriousness of cheating at the college level. At my school it can get you kicked out, and leave you with a bill of up to $350,000. Granted, we take honor a little more seriously than most, but many other schools view cheating in the same light.</p>
<p>To the OP, don't try to lie your way out of this. Lies tend to catch up to people, and it's hard to keep your story straight once you start trying to cover up facts.</p>
<p>i understand the seriousness of cheating. all i said was that if your school doesn't do anything about it, then treat the incident as if it never happened. don't shoot yourself in the foot.</p>
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why are we making this situation more than it seems to be? cheating isn't that big of an offense -- eadad, i'd be much more worried if my doctor had a history of drug use, criminal activity, or general kevorkian-like ongoings.
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<p>It's not so much the cheating itself but what it indicates (overcompetitiveness, lack of ethics, willingness to break the rules) that worries med school adcoms. The issue, as I said before, is that there are plenty of applicants w/o cheating on their record or drug use or criminal activity or Kevorkian-like tendencies. Why should medical schools waste time trying to figure out if you're reformed or bother contacting the Dean to find out the circumstances of your cheating?</p>
<p>I tend to agree with norcalguy. If you're an below average/average/above average applicant with nothing truly exceptional to distinguish yourself from the thousands of people who are applying to medical school, a black mark on your transcript will be all admissions committees need to throw out your application. They will easily be able to find someone else with similar credentials about whom they do not have the same reservations</p>
<p>Here's my stance on it. If your school doesn't put a mark on your transcript( you should find this out soon) and just fail you for that course instead, don't say anything. The worst that can happen is that medschools find out that you cheated by personally contacting your school on how you got the F. In that case, they reject you. However, I you ever tell them, they'll reject you for sure unless you resort to the extreme measures that BDM suggested, and even then, the odds are still better in the former option. </p>
<p>Am I suggesting that you lie? No. I'm suggesting that you don't tell. That isn't lying. Plus, do any of you think it's really fair to exact such a severe punishment for someone that cheated on one test? Similarly, do any of you think its fair to cut off a thief's hands?</p>